The transmission of digital data over a bandlimited channel, such as the analog voice channel of the local loop plant can be impaired in different ways. The impairments that most severely limit data rates are: intersymbol interference, channel noise, analog signal distortion (introduced by analog circuitry in the modem, digital to analog converters, central office line cards, codec filters and the local loop), network impairment and quantization noise. Intersymbol interference (ISI) arises when the frequency spectrum of the transmitted signal is not uniformly accommodated by the channel's passband--causing neighboring data symbols in a transmission sequence to spread out and interfere with one another. This problem may be addressed by using an equalizer FF (a form of filter) to compensate for the channel's linear (amplitude and phase) distortion. A decision feedback equalizer (FB) may be employed in addition to the linear, or feed forward, equalizer to further reduce ISI and network noise. In conventional practice, an equalizer is trained by using a pre-defined training signal using a small number of constellation points such as a positive and a negative signal of the same absolute value. The problem is that such "two-level" training may not be appropriate for the entire range of signal levels and may not be appropriate for all of the different kinds of network impairment. Imperfect adjustment of an equalizer results in a distortion that may be called "equalizer noise".
Channel noise includes thermal or "white" noise, transients and quantization noise. Quantization noise is inversely dependent on the number of quantization levels. In practical systems where the number of quantization levels is fixed, quantization noise depends on the difference between the quantization levels employed by the digital to analog converter (DAC) at a client (analog) modem, at one end of the loop, and the analog to digital converter (ADC) at the network interface to the public switched telephone network (PSTN), at the other end of the loop. A client modem maps specific bit patterns within the user's data stream to different symbols. The DAC in the client modem converts the symbols to a unique analog signal for transmission over the loop to the network interface which contains an ADC to convert the received analog into digital bit patterns for transmission through the PSTN. The most efficient method to maximize data throughput is for the client modem to use the same slicing levels that are actually employed at the network ADC and for the client modem to synchronize its transmissions to the network clock. Such a scheme is disclosed in Ayanoglu et al, U.S. Pat. No. 5,394,437 issued to the assignee of the present application. The problem is that ascertaining the slicing levels is not independent of equalizer adjustment.
Network impairment is comprised of a wide range of digital transformations that take place in the telephone network after analog to pulse code modulation (PCM) conversion. For example, the conventional D2 channel-bank pattern employs the 193rd bit of odd frames to provide a repeating pattern 1010 . . . for framing synchronization. The 193rd bit of even frames is utilized to provide a repeating pattern 000111 . . . for identification by 01 and 10 transitions of the sixth and twelfth frames. The eighth bit of each channel may then be preempted for supervisory signaling related to the respective channel. While such "robbed bit" signaling may not be noticeable when the channel is carrying ordinary speech, the preemption of a bit position from the data stream injects a certain amount of noise in the channel that can have important ramifications, particularly during equalizer training. While some modems choose a signaling level for equalizer training that is not used for network supervisory signaling, some transmission lines may preempt any signaling level for supervisory purposes and therefore inject noise into the channel that will slow down equalizer training. Where the network uses robbed bit signaling, reference may be made to our co-pending application entitled "Improved Equalizer Training In the Presence of Network Impairment", filed on Jun. 22, 1999, Ser. No. 09/338,664.
In the copending application of Dagdeviren-13, Ser. No. 08/829,274, entitled System and Method for Iteratively Determing Quantization Intervals of a Remote ADC and Modem Employing the Same, now U.S. Pat. No. 5,999,564, (the subject matter of which is hereby incorporated by reference), a system is described for determining the actual quantization intervals of the ADC in the network interface and for setting analog signaling levels of the client modem's DAC to correspond to the actual, rather than ideal, quantization intervals. Briefly, the client modem sends a training sequence of "probe" signals to a central device in the network which analyzes the sequence and responds indicating whether the probe signals were higher or lower than the actual thresholds. This system requires two-way transmission of information between the client modem and the central analyzing device.
L. Cai et al, U.S. Pat. No. 5,831,561 issued Nov. 3, 1998 discloses an improvement on the aforementioned Dagdeviren-13 application in which the symbol table employed in the client modem is configurable as a function of the quantization intervals used by the ADC in the network interface so that the maximum possible minimum separation exists between adjacent values.
The above-described prior art systems determine the actual quantization intervals independently of signaling channel equalization, or assume perfect equalization of the signaling channel prior to ascertaining the quantization levels. As a consequence, the compensation for network impairment is only imperfectly achieved because the determination of the quantization thresholds is not independent of the equalizer adjustment and the adjustment of the equalizers is not independent of the slicing thresholds. This gives rise to inaccurate equalizer adjustment which reduces the accuracy of quantization level determination and hence reduces the number of usable PCM levels which, in turn, reduces the data throughput.